What new tales can I tickle your interest with today?  Some of it has been so much a part of life, that the unusual is no longer surprising – so things happen and it’s just – well – Africa.  Within the last week, no fewer that about 30 huge white UN transport vehicles  – you know – 18 wheelers  transporting huge earth moving  equipment rumbled through town on their way to Sudan.  Museveni was also evidently in town because there was a lot of military presence evident:  military police, fancy black SUVs….  new jets buzzing Gulu.  The whole enchilada.

White flies are in season…  That’s big if you are Ugandan.  And the mounds are big.  The boy on the left is sitting on one that’s about 4 feet, which is really just a baby mound. Last week we noticed a small swarm circling the light bulb in the dining room and it felt like an invasion.  Had I been a good Ugandan woman I might have said  “Dinner time!”  But alas – although I am beginning to be able to hear whispers through the walls (Ugandans have bionic hearing) I have not graduated to eating white ants.  In the first place, I don’t know why they are called ants.  The damn things FLY and you have to pull their wings off before saute-ing them.  

So I did the ugly-American thing, ran for the can of BOP insect killer (which doesn’t) and then swatted them with my super-duper tennis racquet mosquito zapper, which was getting lonesome in the corner.  They crunch nicely under foot.  

I am on my third fan…  The first one died a slow and painful death.  The next one lost one of it’s plug fingers (lousy two prong plugs known to fall off for no reason) and had to have an organ transplant  (spliced the plug from the dead organ-donor fan onto the new one) and the third one lived one day until one prong fell off.  The shop refused to replace either the fan or the plug, so I pulled the Munu card and told them I would tell all the other Munus not to shop there since they don’t stand behind their products.    That is pretty much an unknown concept here (except for my wonderful Indian grocer, Samil) and  my threats had no impact whatsoever.  

There’s a reason Samil’s store is doing better than all the rest.  The saga goes on and isn’t the least bit interesting, except to note that today was my third trip into the store – this time with fan in hand and a nice Ugandan man who supported my tale of woe.  The fan now works.  After the first plug transplant, it broke again.  When I told them I was the one who had put the plug on (CORRECTLY because it DID work for a moment) they rolled their eyes without any attempt to disguise their utter dis-belief that a mere woman could do such a thing.   Where is Gloria Steinem  when you need her…  

I spent Thursday morning back in the police station where I was referred – after much discussion – to Room 12, where I was met by a young woman inspector, who informed me that “No, you cannot have a copy of this report.  It is not stamped.”  Nothing here has any validity unless it is stamped.  My landlady has to buy a stamp to stamp my receipt for payment of the rent, or it is not accepted by my organization.   Anyone can get a stamp made, with any name or ID on it.  Have stamp, will travel, authorize and be official.  She also informed me that I would have to PAY for the receipt of an official (stamped) report in some weeks after they have continued to draw diagrams and investigate and question suspects (whose names they have lost).  I am informed that I will have to pay 60,000 shillings for this report.  My organization informed me – as I suspected – that this is the Munu price.  We shall see.   I expect no results, but my landlady has reminded me that it will be my fault if the burglar is not caught and he comes back –  i.e. it will be because I did not go back and pressure (pay) the police.  What a country.  

It’s been that kind of week.  I am thinking it can only improve.  Tomorrow I am turning a page on the calendar, rainy season is flirting with us and I now have a refrigerator and a new housemate.  I’m hoping this is a “phase of the moon” sort of thing, but I can find nothing of the kind.  All you planet watchers out there – tell me there is a reason for this and it will END!   All things come to him/her who waits…   even rain.

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Tonight, as I studied Acholi, Earnest (child on the right in photo to left) brought in a handful of pieces from an incomplete Snow White puzzle and they began to stick pieces together with no concept of matching patterns, colors, border pieces – concepts that are already well in place with 10 year olds in the US.  I joined them on the floor and in that short period of our putting the pieces together, there were many “Aaaahhs” and “Yesses” of discovery of matching patterns and re-creating the design, not just pushing pieces together that sorta fit.  It was a new concept – these pieces make a picture!

Because of our educational system in the States, and things that are just built in to a culture of education and opportunity, we take many processes for granted, not particularly realizing in the moment how much teaching is going on as we spend time with our kids. And these beautiful children are actually quite well supported in their education, because Florence their grandmother who is putting them through school, is highly educated and very intelligent and works with them. I begin to see why problem solving, abstract thinking and so on are lacking in the culture at large.

Yet – a bit later I heard this banging going on and saw them hammering a piece of scrap fabric into a random shape of wood, using another piece of wood as a hammer.   I couldn’t understand what he said he was making, so I watched – my curiosity mounting.  Pretty soon, he slipped a piece of old foam from a defunct mattress into the pouch he’d made and nailed down the other side.  He’d made an eraser so they could write their math problems on the concrete floor and use it as a chalk board.    Last week he was making a rake out of a plastic part, some rope and a stick from a tree.  There is no lack of intelligence, just opportunity and teaching.  These are my days here – discovering how part of the world puts life together using only what’s available.  Every day, I learn some use of a something I would not have considered a resource: urine poured around the garden to deter pests – ash from the cooking fires to deflect a trail of ants…. etc.

And then there are white ants:  actually monster termite looking creatures that come out of mounds as tall as I am.  They are called white, because they have pearlescent white wings about an inch long.  These are a delicacy and the guard at our training site was collecting a bunch in an old hubcap, saving them to saute later as a tasty snack.

And on that note folks, I’m folding myself into bed and tucking in my insecticide treated mosquito net as sounds of night-song and drumming waft through the window from the school behind the house.  I’m going to read some distinctively NOT Acholi and try to defrazzle my brain to get ready for another day in Africa.

I but maber (Sleep well)

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